U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a maternal and child health event held in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday, May 11, 2026, in Washington, DC.
Aaron Schwartz | Bloomberg | Getty Images
President Donald Trump said Monday that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and the imprisonment of Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai will be on the agenda at a Beijing summit later this week.
Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan have become a flashpoint between the two countries, prompting a sharp reaction from Beijing, which accused the United States of violating the “one China principle” and warned that attempts to “contain China” through Taipei would fail.
Asked about America’s longstanding support for the defense of Taiwan, Trump said Monday: “I’m going to talk to President Xi about that.” “President Xi wants us not to do that, and I’m going to have that discussion. It’s one of the many things I’ll talk about.”
This comes after Beijing reportedly pressured the Trump administration to scale back its security efforts on the island.
President Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday to discuss a wide range of topics, including the Iran war, trade, rare earth export controls, Taiwan and other key topics.
The Trump administration has reportedly not moved forward with arms deliveries, even after a record $11 billion in arms shipments to Taiwan was approved in December ahead of a presidential summit.
“By supporting Taiwan’s independence through arms sales, the United States will only harm itself. Any attempt to use Taiwan to contain China is doomed to failure,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jia-kun said in December.
Last Friday, Taiwanese lawmakers approved a $25 billion special defense budget to buy missiles and other weapons from the United States, but far from the $40 billion the government had requested to counter China’s increasingly aggressive military.
Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund, said a softening of Trump’s rhetoric, even if vague, would be “the most volatile outcome” of the summit.
Glaser said “implicit or explicit deals in which the United States concedes spheres of influence over Taiwan to China” in exchange for concessions in other countries could embolden China to take more aggressive steps to erode Taiwan’s autonomy.
China claims the democratically ruled island as its own territory, a claim rejected by Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party.
Chinese officials described Taiwan as the “biggest risk point” in bilateral relations with the United States and called on it to “keep commitments and make the right choices that open new spaces for China-US cooperation.”
Rai-chan’s release
President Trump said he would once again advocate for Lai’s release. In February, a Hong Kong court sentenced Lai to 20 years in prison for conspiring with foreign forces.
“Jimmy Lai, he caused a lot of chaos in China. He tried to do the right thing. He didn’t succeed and went to jail, but people will want him out and I want him out,” President Trump said on Monday. He had previously called for Lai’s release during a meeting with President Xi on the sidelines of the APEC summit in October last year.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government has accused foreign governments of interfering in Hong Kong’s judicial procedures, and has vowed that Mr. Lai “should be severely punished in accordance with the law.”
Lai, a pro-democracy activist and founder of the now-defunct newspaper Apple Daily, was found guilty in December on charges including colluding with foreign forces, endangering national security and conspiring to publish inflammatory material. The 78-year-old has been in custody for more than five years while serving a separate prison sentence for fraud.
The 20-year sentence was the longest sentence given under the national security law introduced in 2020, exceeding the 10-year sentence given to former law professor and activist Benny Tai, who was convicted in November 2024 of conspiracy to subvert state power.
